Porous silicon material has many applications including sensors, adsorbents, optical reflectance and refractance applications and battery anodes. It is because of both the material and optical properties of porous silicon, and the relative ease and low cost by which this material can be produced that it has such widespread applications.
Porous silicon production uses etching of silicon wafers in a bath. However, uniformity of etching and speed of etching is limited when a single wafer is etched in a bath. Further, typically, the etch characteristics vary over the surface of the wafer impacting consistency of the materials produced.